Elemental Omen (Paranormal Public Book 10) (20 page)

“Let me tell you right now,” I said. “If there’s one thing I can promise you it’s that you’ll regret that.”

“Why?” Keegan asked.

“No good can possibly come of trying to get anywhere near Lisabelle,” I said. “She smells curiosity like most paranormals can smell trash, and then she stamps on it with her foot until it’s crushed to plaster and tiny bits and pieces.”

Keegan was looking at me and frowning, then he laughed. “Naw, I’m sure you’re wrong.”

I had the feeling that he was imagining something like a black lighthouse with a beacon, something strong and powerful. What he was missing was the deadly part. That lighthouse breathed dragon fire and reveled in power like a child revels in a sandbox.

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said.

When Keegan didn’t respond, I glanced at him. He was sitting up straighter, staring at the spot where Rake had disappeared. “Maybe we should check on him.”

None of the other tree sprites had ventured out of their trees yet, possibly because they were worried about a second wave of attacks and the need to use more flood waters. But Rake should have been back by now, and he wasn’t. An image of Sip’s devastated face floated through my mind and I started to move.

I scrambled to my feet and pushed my way down the tree, racing past confused-looking tree sprites on the way. I was about to climb down the ladder when I remembered that I commanded wind, and in my sudden worry about Rake I didn’t even think twice about the fact that I planned to fly to his aid like it was no big deal. Sip would never forgive me if something happened to me, let alone me forgiving myself, but none of that seemed important when measured against the possibility that Rake was in danger.

The air didn't come easily. It had been sucked into the fire and pushed around by the water, and now an elemental was calling it. Confused didn’t begin to cover it, and I was nearly dumped on my head, but I did manage to get down to the soggy earth without mishap. I glanced back once. Hundreds of faces were staring at me in shock, but I didn’t waste time standing there. Fear made my airways close so that my breath came in ragged gasps.

“Rake!” I screamed as I ran. “Rake!” Mud went flying up all around me until my legs and arms were splattered with it. I was pelting through a clearing that had just been under cannon fire. It was either very brave or very stupid. I guess I’d find out which.

The woods were a thick tangle of branches and leaves, most of it soggy, some of it burned. The strange smell of green leaves burning permeated the air. There were no footprints, but of course there wouldn’t be, because Rake had flown in there. After I had gone a little way into the woods, I heard a crashing sound and a snarl from somewhere ahead that sent me racing forward. I had just rounded the corner of a tree when something massive went flying past me and slammed into the nearest tree, making me nearly fall over as the tree shook and trembled. Something else whizzed past me a second later and I realized it was Rake. Then I saw that the thing that had hit the tree was a paranormal he was fighting.

“Ricky! Get back!” Rake shouted as he stormed past. In his fury he looked like he was ten feet tall. The figure he was fighting was tall and thick set, but he had a hood covering his head and shadowing his face, so it was impossible to tell who he was. At the same moment I took all that in, I caught a whiff of something in the air.

There was a fire.

I turned to see if Rake had noticed, but he was busy grappling with the hooded figure, whom he had just thrown to the ground. Just then something brushed past my cheek and made me flinch, and I saw the bats starting to gather.

Torn between dangers, I decided that the bats weren’t as important as finding out what was burning. Then I saw a spark across the small clearing and realized that it had come from a cannon. So at least one was primed to go off, and the tree sprites didn’t have their next set of defenses up yet.

I had to think of something quickly; the cannon was about to fire and I was never going to get there in time. Just as I started to run toward it anyhow, something caught my eye overhead and I looked up. A shape was swinging from the trees, moving faster than I could fly. Pale skin shone in the night as a pile of ragged clothing landed next to the cannon and Keegan stamped out the fuse and glared at the weapon.

While I was still rooted to the spot, amazed at what Keegan had done and trying to decide what to do myself now that he had disabled the cannon, Rake gave a cry. The paranormal he had been fighting had struck him and run, and Rake had stumbled to the ground. I took one more glance at Keegan to make sure he was alright - he appeared to be fine, just really angry - and made my way to my friend. Rake was on his knees, glaring into the darkness.

“What was that?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Rake, “but I’m going to find out.”

Keegan and I helped Rake back to the clearing; no one wanted to stay in the woods any longer than necessary. Strangely, Rake’s truck was still there. The floods hadn’t touched it, even though I could have sworn that the water had covered it like a rock at the bottom of the ocean.

“Are you alright?” I asked the vampire once we were in view of the lookout tree again.

“Oh, please, I’m fine. My pride is hurt more than anything else,” he muttered, falling heavily into the driver’s seat of the truck.

Keegan was looking back and forth between us, and once I knew that Rake was settled I went over to him. “Thanks for helping with the cannon,” I said.

The tree sprite was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he said, “I only saw that fuse because of you. I only went to help Rake because you were there. I never would have left the tree otherwise.” His tone was neutral, and I couldn’t tell if he thought any of this was good or bad. It was just a fact that he was acknowledging. For the first time he looked at me like an equal, like I had done something worthwhile in his eyes. We had worked together to fight and it felt really good. The only problem was that it also felt like the fight was far from over.

When Rake dropped me off that night I was so tired I could barely stand. I didn’t bother to see where he had found room for all the tree sprites. Of course they had to come with us, because now that their hiding spot was compromised they couldn’t be left out in the open, and Duckleworth was the obvious place for them. I dragged myself up to my bed and fell into it without even bothering to take my shoes off. Soon the trial of Camilla Van Rothson would start, and after that I would leave again for good. I was determined to go, and I didn’t care what Keegan had tried to do. I had made up my mind. I would not attend Paranormal Public this fall or any fall.

When I woke up in the morning it was to the gentle sound of tapping on the window. I groggily lifted my head, but at first I could see nothing but blur. After a minute my vision cleared enough so that I could see a bird pecking at the window. Stupid thing. I let my head fall back down and fell asleep again.

When I woke up for a second time it was to scratching at the door, and I found myself wondering if this place was ever quiet. When I realized that I still had my dirty shoes on I pushed them off and was at least glad that they had hung off the end of the bed all night. I was sure Duke Dacer wouldn’t forgive me for making a mess of his sheets. I flung the door open and looked forward, but there was nothing there. Then I jumped slightly as something brushed against my legs. I looked down and couldn’t help grinning.

The black puppy brushed past me, his tail wagging proudly as he scampered into my room.

“Okay, you can visit, but Zellie won’t like it,” I informed him. “And if Dacer catches you here you’ll be in big trouble.” I closed my door again and went to pick the dog up. He clearly liked being petted and cuddled, but mostly it seemed that he just liked to sit there and watch me. The sun was high enough in the sky that I knew the morning was in full swing by the time I decided to strip off my clothes and bathe. My body was mottled with bruises from the attack and my fight with Keegan. My ribs looked like someone had painted them purple. For once I wished there was a fallen angel handy, but at least nothing was broken, and I knew I’d heal quickly. I threw the clothes in the corner, washed up quickly, and put on some of the clothes Dacer had left for me. Then I petted the puppy again.

“Do you have a name, Buddy?” I whispered, looking into his bright purple eyes. He wagged his tail. “I’ll have to ask Zellie. Maybe she’ll let me name you. I wish I could have a dog.” He gently head-butted me, as if he had something to tell me if only he could find the words. I had no idea what it might be.

When I left my room the puppy followed me. He made me laugh on the stairs, because it took some doing for him to find the courage to go down. He had to jump one stair and pause, jump another stair and pause, and by the time we got all the way down the stairs my stomach was rumbling and I was worried I was going to be too late to catch breakfast.

“What are you doing?” Sip asked, appearing at the top of the stairs. The puppy, gleeful that he had made it all the way down the endless staircase, was running around my legs in circles.

First things first, I needed to talk to the tree sprite. For reasons I was barely aware of, I went hunting for Keegan. More and more I suspected that even as my sister, Sip, and Lisabelle were trying to bring me into the fold, there were things they weren’t telling me. I had the impression that they didn’t think I could handle it, or worse, I had given them the impression that I didn’t care. I could see where they had gotten that idea, but I hated it. I was also starting to face the fact that they didn’t have all the answers, which was terrifying. I sought out Keegan because it seemed like he might just know some things I needed to know myself.

I was never going to be able to go away and forget about Public while there were paranormals out there trying to kill me. If I had come to no other conclusion, at least I had decided to take care of that problem once and for all.

I found the tree sprite in the library. He was alone, reading a book about the Wild West. When I entered the room he looked up and raised his eyebrows. He already looked settled in Dacer’s castle, even if we were only likely to be there for a short while.

“Come to talk?” he asked me.

I nodded. “There are things I need to know.”

“And you want me to tell you?”

“I’m not sure anyone else will,” I said. “Please.”

Keegan sighed and nodded. Even if he didn’t like me, he knew that my knowing as much as possible about this paranormal fight was in his best interest.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know much myself, really. Just theories and stuff I’ve overheard.”

“Do you mean stuff you’ve listened to that you shouldn’t?” I said.

“Let’s not split hairs,” said Keegan, a lopsided grin lighting his pinched features. “And I mostly know about the tree sprites,” he warned, folding his arms over his chest. “Bounty Hunters have been coming after us for years.”

“Since when?” I asked.

“It started maybe two years ago,” said Keegan. “We had always refused any government protections, because there’s this unwritten rule that you leave the Paranormal Strange alone, and since we had always been left alone we thought we were fine. That all changed a couple of years ago. It was like the Bounty Hunters suddenly went crazy. Or maybe they were different Bounty Hunters, I don’t know, but anyhow they came for us, and they weren’t subtle about it.”

“What happened?”

Keegan’s jaw tightened. “They took my dad. They took a lot of us, mostly the strong men. They left the children. I mean, it wasn’t as if we were totally defenseless. Our moms hid us kids while they went to their battle stations. A few of us managed to escape, obviously, but most didn’t.”

“How many were killed?” I asked, feeling cold. Keegan looked so sad. He had lost his father and lived through a lot more trouble than I had imagined. I waited for the rest of the story with sympathy and newfound respect.

“That’s the thing,” said Keegan. “There were no bodies. We never found any bodies.”

“You think they took the tree sprites as prisoners?”

“I think they sold them,” said Keegan quietly. “They’ve been trying to get the rest of us ever since. Why they didn’t take all of us right then when they probably could have if they’d been willing to kill us trying, and who bought all those tree sprites, I have no idea.”

“So, you think your dad might still be alive?”

Keegan nodded slowly. “I know my mom doesn’t want me to think so. She doesn’t want me to have hope, but I do. I think he’s alive and some day I’ll find him. That’s why I can’t go to Public. It just feels like a waste of time.”

That explained some of his attitude, but I wanted to know more. “Ever since then, the situation has been worse?”

“There have been so many reports,” said Keegan. “There’s clearly a network, so that over time, as the government takes out Bounty Hunters, more just rise to take their places. They can’t seem to take out the really good ones, and what’s more, it’s clear that whoever is buying paranormals hasn’t been captured. We stopped calling them Bounty Hunters though, those paranormals that came for my dad. At some point they became something else. Now we just call them Hunters.”

I thought about the vampire in the cloak who had known who I was at the Black Market. He wasn’t the head of the snake, but he was as close as I had seen. He had stood there, powerful and confident. How, with Sip and Lisabelle in charge in different parts of the paranormal world, could he have been so sure he’d get away with buying me? Even though he’d been mistaken on that occasion, his confidence came from somewhere. He had backing and it was powerful. If there were Hunters, he must be one of them.

Keegan was watching me silently, his large eyes focused on my face. “See? Something big is happening. Someone is collecting paranormals as trophies.”

“But why!” I cried. “It doesn’t make any sense. The paranormals aren’t strong. Why not just take them out while they’re weak? What do they need Paranormal Strange for?”

Keegan rolled his eyes. “What do you mean the paranormals aren’t strong?”

“Sip said her government isn’t strong,” I insisted. “So many paranormals were killed in the war that there aren’t that many paranormals left.”

“But she has the darkness premier to back her up,” said Keegan. “If someone rises to challenge Sip, they rise to challenge Lisabelle.”

I sat still for a moment, letting the new idea settle in. How had Keegan figured all of this out while I had been so blind to it? Sure, there were theories galore about who had attacked my sister and her friends and me over the past few years, but until the second bombing attack, so similar to the one at the cottage Lanca had provided, I had thought that the incidents weren’t connected. Of course there were angry paranormals. Of course there were paranormals who felt disenfranchised or hurt by Sip’s policies. Some probably even blamed elementals for the deaths of their family members; it’s what happened when you were at the front line of a war. But now, talking to Keegan, I saw what was happening in a whole new light.

Systematic and unknown evil lurked out there, and the Bounty Hunters were just the visible tip of something much bigger and more sinister.

“I don’t see how I’m connected with the rest of it, though,” I said. “I feel like the Hunters chasing after me to get to Lisabelle doesn’t make any sense.”

Beneath my resistance, though, it was all falling into place in my mind. My value to the paranormals as an elemental was immense. They were coming after me in part for the same old reason: if both my sister and I were dead, the Power of Five would once more be impossible to enact. The paranormals would then be defenseless.

Keegan was looking at me, his face pale and his brow covered in sweat. “Who can call Lisabelle Verlans at any time of the day or night and get a response?” he whispered. I glared at him, silently trying to tell him to do as I had done and shut up. He didn’t. He asked again, and I shook my head again, and he punched my arm.

I rolled my eyes. “Charlotte, Sip, and maybe her parents? She hid her parents away a long time ago, though. I imagine they’re in a place where they can’t be found, and where no one could possibly get to them.”

“No other paranormals?”

“Maybe Lough, when he isn’t busy, and I guess there’s Keller, but he’s basically one unit with Charlotte.”

“And you? Are you one with Charlotte?”

It sounded stupid when he put it like that, so I shook my head. “Lisabelle wouldn’t come with me if I called her.”

“She already has,” said Keegan. “The more paranormals there are who need her help, the more danger she’s in. Whether you like it or not, you are on the highest row of most important paranormals.”

“Because Lisabelle Verlans is supposedly at my beck and call?”

“Because she cares about you,” Keegan said flatly. He was growing increasingly irritated by my obstinacy.

“What? You think they’re doing all this to build some sort of paranormal net that will ensnare her and kill her?” Chills ran down my neck and shoulders just speculating about such an idea.

“Of course they are,” said Keegan. “Now that she controls darkness, I’m sure that getting to her is just as important as getting to you. In fact, it’s probably more important. What can they do against the paranormals as long as the great darkness premier stands behind the president? There’s no way to win a war against the paranormals otherwise. Lisabelle must fall first.”

I chewed my lip. Something about the suggestion bothered me.

“What if the goal isn’t to win?”

“You mean like during the Nocturn War, where the goal was just pure destruction?”

“I don’t know,” I said, mulling it over in my mind. “I’m going to have to think about it.”

“No, don’t think about it, let me spell it out for you,” insisted Keegan. He was attached to this idea like a barnacle to a wet rock. I was simultaneously impressed and annoyed, but he continued without regard to my reaction. “Over the years there have been several powerful and similar attacks against you and yours. Right? Right. Darkness isn’t doing it, because that’s Lisabelle, which means it’s something else. A combination of evil intent on power, sure. But who? No one knows. It’s crazy to think that President Quest hasn’t spent the last few years trying to figure out who exactly wants her and everyone she cares about dead. She must know, but she isn’t saying. OR, she doesn’t know. At this point I’d say the latter, because if she did know she’d send Lisabelle to crush them into little tiny smithereens to step on.”

“You’re saying that there’s a powerful force organized and intent on taking down the paranormals?”

“I’m saying they’re intent on taking down Lisabelle first, but unfortunately, Lisabelle is too powerful to be hit directly, so they’re hitting those near and dear to her. The reason she didn’t stick around at Duckleworth was that she’s spending a massive amount of her energy protecting darkness from those that want to co-opt its power.”

“Which are who?” I said through gritted teeth. “Do you know who has the kind of power that could make such a quest even vaguely feasible? Or else, who has that kind of stupidity?”

I thought about the type of paranormal it would take to challenge Lisabelle, the kind of crazy it would require to think that was a good idea. Even Professor Erikson hadn’t been that stupid, a fact that I remembered very well; she had forced Lisabelle to turn to darkness by simply threatening Sip’s life. No one had threatened my life, though. They had just gone ahead and tried to kill me directly. I hated to admit it, but what Keegan was saying made more sense than I liked. I mean, there had been attacks, that much was clear. The rest followed pretty logically.

“How do we know it isn’t just random Bounty Hunters after valuable paranormals?” I demanded.

Keegan gave me a look that would have peeled paint off of a concrete wall.

“It
is
Bounty Hunters,” he said. He glared at me again, but I was just as confused and perplexed as I looked, so he wasn’t going to glean any information from reading my facial expression. Finally he shrugged and turned his attention back to his books, but my mind stayed on what he had said. “They’re just a special breed of talented and vicious.”

To someone, Lisabelle Verlans presented a problem that had to be solved. Now we just needed to find out who that someone was. The number of options for solving such a problem was limited, and the number of paranormals with the means to execute the possible solutions was even smaller. You’d think this would have narrowed down the possibilities, but for me it only made things more confusing.

The first step, I decided, was to figure out who we were fighting, but a quick mental review of the history made me realize that was easier said than done. The last seven years were littered with enemies.

My meditation let to no conclusion, but by the time I finished I had at least made myself do a systematic review of where the Quest government stood. Sip and her people were opposed from many directions. Because many paranormal families were fragmented and broken, much of the support that the government should have had - their base, in effect - was missing. There were also “hot spots” of open resistance. For example, Sip had ordered paranormals to go to Golden Falls University and abolish it, but they had been successfully rebuffed. Despite Sip’s efforts, the school was still there, and none of the paranormals Sip had commissioned to get through to the actual building had succeeded. It was on her list of things to look into, but the list was long and Golden Falls was far from the top of it.

Raor and Radvarious were also problems. Raor Rock was a stronghold of opposition, crawling with bounty hunters. I had given the place the widest possible berth in my travels. Lisabelle had hinted that something awful had happened there before she had come to save me, but she wouldn’t say what it was.

Another problem was that Lisabelle, in order to deal with all the darkness, had stuffed many of the hellhounds into what paranormals were now calling darkness holes. Undead and Hybrids survived in places like Golden Falls, and hostile Raor had stuck their heads up in clear opposition to Queen Lanca and the Blood Throne. Radvarious was another problem, one that no one said anything about. Lanca was supposedly dealing with it, but no one was sure what that amounted to. The proliferation of rare Hybrid types, as well as problems with the paranormal rings, had made us all vulnerable. To make matters worse, Lisabelle was still hated and blamed for nearly everything, even though at this point very little of it was her fault. Though the paranormal police gave lip service to Sip’s government, they had never come around to truly supporting her. Sip, meanwhile, had her hands full just keeping the surviving paranormals alive.